WordPress REST API

Motivation

Although it has a place, exposing a WordPress instance publicly on the web is not my favorite thing :-) But I like the WordPress backend for easily managing content. Since WordPress has a REST API, it is possible to use it with a custom frontend that consumes the API.

TL;DR

Set permalinks to post name and you can access the API.

Demo

Use this script to get started quickly:

# retrieve WordPress installation which includes SQLite and slugs set to 'Post name'

curl https://joriszwart.nl/poc/wordpress-api/wordpress-pocapidemo.tar.gz --remote-name

tar -xf wordpress-pocapidemo.tar.gz

cd wordpress-pocapidemo
php -S localhost:3000

Then point your browser to http://localhost:3000 to see the working instance.

Administration can be done by browsing to http://localhost:3000/wp-admin and use these credentials:

Username

pocapidemo

Password

pocapidemo

Some API Endpoints

• http://localhost:3000/wp-json/
• http://localhost:3000/wp-json/wp/v2/
• http://localhost:3000/wp-json/wp/v2/pages/
• http://localhost:3000/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/
• http://localhost:3000/wp-json/wp/v2/tags/

Retrieving pages

Using curl

# retrieve pages

curl http://localhost:3000/wp-json/wp/v2/pages/

Which results in pages.json.

Using JavaScript

// retrieve pages

const response = await fetch('http://localhost:3000/wp-json/wp/v2/pages/')
const json = await response.json()

console.log(json)

How to build this yourself

1. Install WordPress with or without SQLite ¹
2. In WordPress go to wp-admin → Settings → Permalinks
3. Select Post name. Plain won’t work.

Notes